WA First Nations child removal complaint filed in H… | NIT

Western Australia has become the second state to be subject to an Australian Human Rights Commission complaint for the discriminatory removal of First Nations children from their families.

n one case, Lisa* was allegedly removed from her family by Communities at age seven and taken 600 km from her home. She was placed in ten different foster homes, suffering sexual and physical abuse, all of which was allegedly reported to Communities who did not follow up the complaints.

In another case, Heather*, had her children removed by Communities, despite suffering abuse at the hands of her partner and father of her kids. They were placed with a non-Indigenous family, allegedly disconnected from their family, culture and community. When she became pregnant again, Communities removed her child shortly after birth.

Both women continue to suffer from long-term trauma and depression as a result of these actions.

The complaint is the second filed by Shine Lawyers to the AHRC concerning a child protection department unlawfully removing Indigenous children, which may lead to a class action for concerned families.

The first complaint was lodged against the NSW Department of Communities and Justice in January.

Class actions special counsel, Caitlin Wilson, said Indigenous families across the country had been “torn apart in this modern-day Stolen Generation”.

“We hope that each claim in each State will set us on the path to file class actions for these marginalised families who will never know a life without the weight of this trauma.”

Source: WA First Nations child removal complaint filed in H… | NIT

Keep a close eye’: The industry selling spyware to jealous spouses | SMH

Days before Simon Gittany threw his partner Lisa Harnum to her death from the balcony of their 15th-floor Sydney apartment in 2011, he had been reading her text messages using spyware. Unlike family locator apps, which allow parents to check where their children are, “stalkerware” promises the chance to secretly look inside another person’s device – and even record their surroundings.

in Australia today, spyware vendors can sell products designed for customers to surveil a target without their consent, despite alarm among domestic violence and security experts. While police say the use of spyware may be criminal, a series of private investigation businesses are promoting the software, sometimes to jealous spouses. They promise services such as viewing call logs and “real-time tracking of their whereabouts”, enabling surveillance “until you have the evidence you need to come forward”. In some cases, the promise is as blunt as: “Do you want to spy on your husband, wife, partner?” One site sells the software for $130 a month.

Stalking, coercive control and obsessive behaviour have been identified as “pathways to homicide”, and Bridget Harris, director of the Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre, says the use of spyware displays all three. Criminologists, support workers and other private investigators, who say the danger is extremely high for domestic violence victims, are now calling for action to stop spyware vendors. “There’s no legitimate reason that that technology should exist,” Harris says.

Source: https://www.smh.com.au/national/keep-a-close-eye-on-your-partner-the-industry-selling-spyware-to-jealous-spouses-20240314-p5fcjv.html?

1800RESPECT launches video counselling service for domestic violence support

The national support service for domestic, family and sexual violence 1800RESPECT has launched an on-demand video counselling service.

The video option is the latest of four services available at 1800RESPECT, including the phone helpline, the SMS text option and the online chat service, which are all available 24/7.

Assistant Minister for the Prevention of Family Violence Justine Elliot said the announcement falls under the government’s National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children 2022-32.

Domestic and family violence contributes to more death, disability and illness in women aged 15 to 44 than any other preventable risk factor, and is the leading cause of homelessness for women and children.

The lives of 14 women have been taken by domestic and family violence in Australia this year, according to Destroy the Joint’s Counting Dead Women.

Source: 1800RESPECT launches video counselling service for domestic violence support

The Impossible Escape: The Story of Narkis Golan, The Hague Convention; and the ongoing battle to protect her young son Bradley | by The Movement Of Mothers | Medium

The Hague Convention has become an international law that now actively works against its initial intent to protect child well-being.

Both the way family courts operate and the way Hague Convention is implemented can be boiled down to one central question — are women and children allowed to leave abusive domestic environments? It seems an extraordinary question to ask, but culturally and legally the answer is often no. Once a woman becomes pregnant her freedom is limited, not by her child, but by a legal culture that remains bound to ideas and norms about human organisation — and the hierarchical relationship between men, women and children — that privilege the interests of men over any other ethical and moral concerns. Seeking to escape abusive men is either incredibly difficult and expensive, or, astonishingly, a punishable offence.

After the initial two-week trial held in the Eastern District of New York, the court found that to return Bradley to Italy would place him at grave risk of harm. There was no dispute of Saada’s physical, psychological, emotional and verbal abuse. Yet, despite fully acknowledging this danger, the court ordered Golan and Saada to present “ameliorative measures” that would facilitate Bradley’s return to Italy. Saada promised to stay away from Golan and to attend therapy for his aggression problems. Extraordinarily, Judge Ann M. Donnelly deemed this sufficient and ordered that Bradley be returned to Italy.

Despite acknowledging that Saada’s violence towards Golan constituted a grave risk to the child, Donnelly concluded that a protective order issued by Italian courts “ameliorates the grave risk of harm to [the child].” Donnelly made note that Saada had not been violent towards Bradley, and had not neglected him. She deemed the only problem to be one of the relationship between Saada and Golan.

Yet this fundamentally misunderstands the nature of domestic violence and the harm it does to children, even if children are not hit themselves. Being inside a household where violence is present has a profound effect on a child’s well-being. There is a serious psychological imprint that the exposure to violence leaves. Fear and insecurity can be embedded at an early age and remain major impediments to how children develop, and restrict how they are able to flourish through all stages of their lives.

On top of this, there is an instinctive connection that children have with their mothers, a dependence on them in their early years, which makes any violence or abuse committed against a mother a direct threat to the most basic and essential needs of a child. In a broader social sense, domestic violence also exposes children to warped ideas of power relations, polluting their understanding of what relationships should be. To believe that domestic violence is just isolated incidents between partners is a failure of duty by judges to understand what actually constitutes child welfare.

Despite its initial intent to safeguard the best interests of children, the Hague Convention has now become a jurisdictional law that pays little attention to child welfare. In doing so the convention provides an international framework to facilitate the embedded legal culture that men have entitlements that are divorced from their actions, and women and children simply do not have the right to leave abusive domestic environments.

Source: The Impossible Escape: The Story of Narkis Golan, The Hague Convention; and the ongoing battle to protect her young son Bradley | by The Movement Of Mothers | Medium

British mother hasn’t seen her children in 10 years and hangs onto the ‘crumbs of their lives’ she gets in phone calls after their American father used the Hague Convention to have them returned to him in the US – as she warns the law is being misused | Daily Mail Online

It has been eight years since Anita Gera last saw her children. Her daughter is now 16, her son 18.

‘He’s now legally an adult,’ she reflects soberly. ‘He’s just finished high school. His graduation was last week. So I have missed his entire childhood since the age of nine. The last birthday I spent with him was his ninth.’

Anita, 59, has been unable to see her children since August 3, 2015, after their father filed a Hague Convention claim against her.

Anita’s life was forever and irrevocably changed by a single piece of legislature most people have never heard of. For nearly a decade, she has dedicated her life to learning the law and raising awareness to end the broken cycle.

Anita met her former partner, an American entrepreneur living in Europe, while she was working in Germany as a journalist. They settled and had children, whose identity she wishes to protect, before deciding to leave Europe in 2007 and begin a new life together in America while the children were still young.

She says that there were signs of abuse before reaching the States, but within of weeks of relocation her situation was more clear. She alleges her partner became ‘controlling’ and short-tempered, telling her explicitly that she would never see her children again if she left or went against him.

The abuse took a physical form, Anita claims. Her partner would push her, grab her hard enough to leave bruises, and would raise his fist. Anita’s partner did not hit her, she maintains, and ‘abuse’ or ‘coercive control’ were not words explored at the time.

Her children were afraid of their father, she says, and knew to behave in a certain way around him, staying quiet and not having friends over.

Anita waited another six years before her partner allowed her to move to England with her children, away from him.

‘My ex-husband said to me: “Tell everyone we’re separated so you can claim benefits” because he never gave us any money to support us. Rent a house? Yes. Put the kids in school? Yes. I’ve got emails saying all of that.

‘But then,’ she says, ‘he changed his mind. “Right, come home now.”‘

When Anita wanted to allow her children to complete the school term, if not the school year, her millionaire ex went through the courts, invoking the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, an international treaty used to determine which jurisdiction the children are ‘habitually resident’ in.

Anita has also worked with the Hague Mothers, a group labelling the Convention a ‘good law gone bad’ that works with experts to ‘put right the injustices perpetuated by the Convention’.

Source: British mother hasn’t seen her children in 10 years and hangs onto the ‘crumbs of their lives’ she gets in phone calls after their American father used the Hague Convention to have them returned to him in the US – as she warns the law is being misused | Daily Mail Online

The struggle of migrant mothers: Escaping abuse and confronting international abduction charges – Migrant Women Press

Head of the Children Department at Dawson Cornwell, a family law firm established in 1972 based in London, Carolina Marín Pedreño explained how The Hague Convention works when meeting a domestic violence situation:

“The Convention allows very exceptional defences where a child should not be returned by the Court. One of those defences is if there is a ‘grave risk’ that the child would be placed in an intolerable situation, as stated by Article 13(1)(b) of the Convention.

“The difficulty for mothers to understand this is because they think ‘if I’m a victim of abuse, consequently my child is a victim of abuse’, and they don’t understand that ‘grave risk’ is ‘future risk’, so the Court needs to consider whether there is a risk in the future return.

“Maybe the mother has been a victim of domestic abuse, but if the Court is satisfied that she’s going to be protected in the other country by measures that the applicant (the father) offers to the Court or if the country has its remedies to protect her, as a victim of abuse, and the child, they need to comply with the Convention and return the child.

Although the cases of international abduction of children envision protecting the child, there is a great debate on what is classified as a ‘grave risk’ and what is the limit a mother has to reach to be protected from their abusers.

According to Juliana Wahlgren, Revibra’s report revealed that amongst the 300 cases they have had in the past three years, 98% had proved domestic violence. However, sometimes the proof isn’t enough, or the violence is only against the woman, which the Brazilian judge wouldn’t extend to the family.

Source: The struggle of migrant mothers: Escaping abuse and confronting international abduction charges – Migrant Women Press

Getting ‘Hagued’: How One International Law Enables Intimate Partner Violence – Women’s Media Center

The 1980 Hague Convention defines international child abduction as the “wrongful” removal or retention of children away from their country of “habitual residence,” accompanied by a parent or custodian. “Wrongful,” in this instance, refers to the disapproval of the trip — or its eventual extension — by the “left-behind parent,” who then calls for the child’s return.

103 nations and counting have joined the treaty, including the United States, which has the greatest incidence rates for both incoming and outgoing procedures under the Hague Convention. (In 2022 alone, the US had a total of 657 active abduction cases.)

In 75 percent of cases today, the “left-behind parent” is the father, according to the latest official data from the Hague Conference of Private International Law (HCCH).

Getting “hagued” is a term triggered as soon as the international “abductor” is notified to return the child. National authorities from the country of habitual residence — and of the left-behind parent — request the child’s return under penalty of facing courts and even Interpol. Not all countries criminalize abduction (meaning that the parent removing the child does not always face criminal penalties), but the repercussions for the child’s custody are far-reaching.

A return order acknowledges that the child was in fact “abducted,” so mothers are considered a risk to their children; they are not allowed to be alone with them again until custody has been settled.

In the 21st century, their stories have grown all too common: women travel and live abroad, fall in love, and start a family away from their home country.

“When it doesn’t work out, of course you want to go back to your homeland, where you count on emotional and logistical support, even your language,” said Spanish attorney Carolina Marín Pedreño, who also litigates in England.

In the last decade, an estimated 15,000 women across the globe have been accused of abducting their own children (according to data from official reports in 2008, 2015, and 2021).

In lack of agreement with the father, these foreign mothers are then confronted with only three choices over their children: abide, abduct, or abandon.

Abiding means remaining in the country where their children were born, where the mothers are likely seen as outsiders and struggle without family, community, or support. In many cases, these circumstances also trap them in risky situations of domestic and intimate partner violence.

Mothers who abduct often do so as a desperate measure to seek support. Whether aware of the Hague Convention or not, most of them are trying to protect themselves and their children from abuse.

In 2008, 24-year-old Cassandra Hasanovic was brutally murdered by her ex-husband mere months after returning to England to pursue a custody battle with her abuser. She had fled with their children to escape him and got “hagued” in Australia, where she had relatives.

Hasanovic was on her way to a women’s refuge — a journey for which she’d pleaded for a police escort but was denied — when her ex-husband appeared, dragged her out of the car, and stabbed her to death in front of their children and Hasanovic’s mother.

Source: Getting ‘Hagued’: How One International Law Enables Intimate Partner Violence – Women’s Media Center

MeToo Family Courts

Are you are victim of systemic abuse and institutional  failure in the federal and family court systems?

This Class Action involves a plaintiff (known as the representative plaintiff or lead litigant) pursuing a claim on behalf of a larger group that has been similarly affected. They are the only persons assuming the risk and cost of the litigation, and they are running their claim in the interests of all affected parties within the defined group.

This Class Action has 3 Objectives:

Formal Apology

Obtain a formal government apology and acknowledgement for the harm family and federal courts have caused to children and families, recognizing the impact on a generation and paving the way for healing and justice.

Compensation

Financial and other compensation for harm and economic loss to redress and support affected individuals and children who have been victims of systemic abuse and institutional  failure in the federal and family court systems.

Judicial Accountability

The immediate establishment of an independent Federal Judicial Commission with community representation and measures to deal with systemic bias and collusion.

Source: MeTooFamilyCourts

When can we really raise a glass on International Women’s Day? | Madonna King | New Daily

We are currently ranked 32nd in the world for female parliamentary representation, below New Zealand, Rwanda and Iceland.

It’s on the rise. For example, in federal Parliament the number of female politicians has jumped 15 per cent since 2002, to sit at 40 per cent in 2023.

For those young women who feel excluded from politics and disinterested in the ‘he said-he said’ that is yelled across the political chamber, Zoe McKenzie’s message was a warm embrace that showed politics can be done in another way.

But it’s time we stopped celebrating little strides forward in equality with purple cupcakes and long celebratory lunches and looked at how we could genuinely drive real gender equality in our communities.

How can we raise our glasses this International Women’s Day when the fastest growing homeless group is women over the age of 55?

Or when some girls’ schools in Australia still do not allow shorts as part of the uniform.

Or when the media refer to a felon or an accused person as ‘a mother of three’ and the narrative is dominated by her role as a woman. Rarely do we know the marital status of a male in similar circumstances.

But it’s probably the heartbreak of domestic violence that drives home the absolute inequality now faced by many women in Australia (and indeed around the world).

Advertising campaigns, targeted school talks and new laws to address coercive control have all failed to reduce the nation’s shameful domestic violence figures, with police DV callouts now increasing 20 per cent each year. In the large proportion of those, the victim is female.

Imagine if domestic violence figures became the barometer of equality, and we – men and women – worked together to curtail the heartache that largely remains hidden.

Source: When can we really raise a glass on International Women’s Day?

Judge Threatens Tween with Jail if She Doesn’t Start Loving Her Abusive Father

A South Carolina Family Court judge threatened a tween—directly, in open court—with jail if she did not start loving her father.

A 10 year-old. Threatened with jail. By a judge. For not loving or wanting to be with a man who had abused her mother and her. Shocking, but not surprising—just another Post-Separation Crisis [PSC] case. This awful judge is also involved in four other mothers’ cases highlighted below.

The judge went above and beyond when she ordered the bailiff to take the girl to the jailhouse so she could see the awful conditions that awaited her if she continued to resist reunifying with her father. There seems to be no limit to what judges will do to achieve their agenda of maintaining men’s control in their family post-separation. It is, though, an absurd step further than usual to order a child to love her father.

Meanwhile, the tween’s mother, Brittney, watched—horrified—as the bailiff appeared to be following through on the judge’s threat to take her daughter to jail, approaching her with outstretched handcuffs. Turns out he was just helping the judge terrorize the tween into docile compliance with what would come next…

Source: Judge Threatens Tween with Jail if She Doesn’t Start Loving Her Abusive Father